A large mural, created by local artist T.J. Zark, is displayed on the side of a building in the Mancos Creative District on Dec. 13, 2017 in Mancos. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)

TRINIDAD — Like many things in this brick town built by coal workers along the New Mexico border, decades of boom and bust have illuminated not only a fascinating history, but a series of cultural losses that have gutted buildings along Main Street.

The 135-year-old Trinidad Opera House is boarded up and vacant, its roof caving in after it was bought by an investor for a promise of legalized gambling that never materialized. Down the block and across the road, the 109-year-old Fox Theatre is also empty and shuttered, having stopped screening movies in the summer of 2013.

Arts and culture can seem like a luxury in towns such as Trinidad, which have been hit hard by job losses in coal mining and manufacturing. But if the tourists who pull off Interstate 25 to buy legal marijuana in this border town look closer, they’ll see a sign advertising the future site of Space to Create Trinidad — a $17 million live/work project slated to break ground in May.

From Trinidad to Mancos, Ridgway to Salida, a growing number of communities far outside the Front Range are putting arts and culture at the center of their economic development strategies, joining other rural, mountain and border towns that have tapped into state-level resources to end the boom-and-bust cycle of failed natural-resource industries that has decimated their populations.

Read more about how artists and legislators from Mancos to Trinidad are working to bridge the arts-and-culture gap at denverpost.com.

John Wenzel is a reporter and critic for The Denver Post who has written about comedy, music, film, books, video games and other popular culture over the years. His feelings for Guided by Voices and Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth are wholly unnatural and know no bounds.